For example, we say “the United States,” “the Ukraine,” “the Sudan,” et cetera. How come we put “the” in front of some countries, but not others? I’ve never heard of anyone refer to it as “the Canada” or “the France,” the example.
I’m too busy to answer, I’m drinking with my friend Seamus in The Ireland.
I’ve always thought it was a similar thing to the whole “a” or “an” debate.
I think someone explained here once that Ukraine was referred to as “the Ukraine” during the Soviet days so that the Kremlin could pretend that it was just a region of the USSR and not an independent country that had been absorbed into the Soviet state. And that now that Ukraine is an independent country, they don’t want the “the” used in the name.
You mean The Republic?
Well, it is le Canada in French.
Along the same lines, why is it “The Ohio State University” and not “The Indiana University” or “The Illinois State University?”
Search on “Gambia” or “Hague” to find previous threads on the general topic.
Asked, answered, beaten to death, risen from the dead and finally shut down here.
Sometimes it’s because the country name is an adjective phrase: “The United States of America;” “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland;” “the Netherlands” (i.e., the low lands, presumably defined by reference to an inland observer in France or Germany).
This is controversial in the case of Ukraine, because there are apparently some sources that suggest that “Ukraine” derives from a Slavic term meaning “borderland,” defined presumably from a Russian point of view. Many Ukrainians resent being called “the Ukraine,” because it supposedly implies that their country is nothing more than Russia’s borderland.
I have heard that “the Gambia” is used because it is named after the river, which doesn’t seem like a very satisfying answer.
The Thompson Twins sang about “the Lebanon,” but that may have just been artistic license.
Just fighting ignorance - I believe you meant The Human League.
OB
Vive la France!
He’s not your friend with the AIDS, is he?
As a University at Buffalo graduate, I have no idea.
or was it the clap?
More or less this. I might say I’m from the US, but I wouldn’t say I’m from the America unless I wanted to sound pretentious. It’s the same for the UK vs. Britain/England, or the Netherlands vs. Holland. I’ve never heard anyone say the Sudan, or anything else
The Ukraine is the only real outlier that I’m familiar with, but that seems to be a special case from upthread. The few Ukrainians I’ve met simply said they were from Ukraine, but I don’t recall ever being corrected or them acting offended when I mentioned the Ukraine. Frankly, it never really occured to me that they were a special case and I suppose I always took them not using the definite article as simply a part of their speech pattern as, IME, the use of definite articles by native speakers of Slavic languages seems to be inconsistent compared to a native English speaker.
ETA: There’s also the Czech Republic but, again, those I’ve met from there just say they’re from Czech, and it only really gets the article because we tend to use the full name for the country, whereas it makes no sense to say the Czech. So that’s probably mostly along the normal case except that the name comes first rather than the adjective.
In the case of the Ukraine and the Sudan (and perhaps the Netherlands) those names actually originally applied to regions rather than to individual countries (compare e.g. the Great Plains, the Pampas, the Sahara). The “Sudan” for example referred (and still does) to a wide area of savanna to the south of the Sahara proper. The name of the country is just “Sudan” with the “the.” Other posters have explained about the Ukraine/Ukraine.
D’oh! I would’ve sworn…
Thanks for catching that. 
“The Ukraine” and “the Lebanon” are often used t designate geographic or ethnographic regions roughly but not precisely coterminous with the nations identified by the substantive without the article. Similarly “the Sudan” was a savannah-like region south of the Sahara which included the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, now Sudan and South Sudan, and French Sudan, now Mali.
I was going to make the point that a few posters have already just made. There’s three reasons why countries have “the” in front of their name. The third one is becoming less common - it’s mostly older people who still use terms like ‘the Lebanon’, because it dates from the period before they became official countries after independence.
1) It precedes a description of the country: The United States of America, the United Kingdom, the Federated States of Micronesia.
2) The country name is plural: The Netherlands, the Bahamas, the Philippines.
3) The geographical area used to have the same name as the modern country: The Ukraine, the Sudan, the Lebanon, the Gambia, the Congo.